Thanks to my reviewers. Hope this next chapter doesn't disappoint. I hope to post 1 per day until it's done, and if anyone is still interested, a short sequel to follow.
I disclaim. The title of this chapter is taken from Bowling for Soup's song "Smoothie King" from their "A Hangover You Don't Deserve" album. Stargate SG-1 does not belong to me. Did you have to rub it in?
Happy Ending Hollywood…
"He's crashing!"
The nurse was saying something else but Jack found himself lost in the high pitched wail of the heart monitor as Daniel's heart skipped beats.
As abruptly as it began, it ended. The momentary blip had almost caused Jack's heart to stop too, but now Daniel's was back to beating and his own to racing.
"Dr Fraiser?" Damn, did his voice really just quake?
"He's back," Janet hung her stethoscope around her neck and started doing medical things to Daniel. Anise's device was doing its job, keeping his heartbeat steady and regular even as the rest of his body failed him. Jack found he couldn't look away as her fingers spread across his throat and chest before, for the briefest moment, coming to rest on his forehead to brush that errant lock of hair away. She might never admit it, but O'Neill suspected that Dr Fraiser's most frequent patient was also her favourite. "Colonel," oh hell, were those tears? Jack prayed not. "If I'm going to help Daniel, I need to know what bit him."
"We're going back to P5X-606 later today. The General ordered us all to wear hazmat suits just in case, but Teal'c," he slapped the big guy on the shoulder and felt the Jaffa gaze down at him with that impossible to read expression of his, "says they don't carry one in his size, so he gets to go commando."
The joke was awful and not even Carter could raise a dutiful smile in return.
O'Neill sobered abruptly, though that was easy enough as he'd never lost himself behind his joker's mask. Nodding his head towards the pale and motionless figure in the bed, for Daniel is a childlike figure swamped by the grey blankets and white sheets, he commanded in a tone that belied its own pleading emotion, "Take care of Danny while we're gone."
Janet's look told him all he needed to know, but it was with a heavier heart that he turned out of the infirmary and set off for his office.
He'd practically dragged Mandras back to the Haven, the boy confused but willing to please his new friend.
She wasn't there when he reached the stone building. Apparently it was her way to wander down to the wander the rocky landscape during the day, sometimes collecting food or flowers, other times just thinking. They all understood the need for solitude.
There were faces he recognised though, people who welcomed him as a hero. They had been villains the last time he'd seen them, possessed by Goa'uld, golden of eye and black of heart. Now their faces shone with a far more holy light.
Apparently new arrivals had been rare until recent years when they'd been coming faster than anyone could remember. SG-1, Daniel thought with some pride, were the ones doing that. Ra's host, Apophis's and the one that made him shudder, Hathor's. She had been afraid to approach him at first, her personality so utterly different to her nymphomaniac parasite, and she had hung back, hiding her face behind the red hair that lay in tangles against her cheeks.
She thought he was careful not to look at her, but a few gentle smiles cast her way were more signs of his absolute abstraction than the preoccupation with his time with her parasite. At the end of an hour's lively conversation with the others, she'd gathered her courage into both hands and approached him. Falling to her knees, a position he quickly helped her up from, she begged his forgiveness. He told her that there was nothing to forgive and that she had been far more a victim of Hathor than he, or any of SG-1, had. She had run weeping then, but the others had assured him that the tears were not of distress but of joy that she was forgiven her trespasses.
Every moment he was there, Daniel felt the tension in his body rise as he waited for her, Ammonet's former host, Kasuf's daughter, Skaara's sister, his wife, Shau'ri. She was here, he knew it, could feel it in his bones, and every moment not spent with her was an eternity of agony.
The hours passed like days. The sun rose slowly and was high in the sky before Daniel could settle enough to sit still and not pace the floor as he waited for her coming. They tried to get him to eat, but he had no stomach for it. His lips were moving continually shaping the beloved words in Abydonian and his tongue could almost taste her. He wouldn't displace that feeling for mere bodily need. He hadn't slept in more than twenty-six hours, but he didn't care. Shau'ri was minutes away. She always returned for the midday meal, they assured him again and again.
The others, especially Ra and Apophis's former hosts, kept touching him, reassuring themselves of his reality even as he kept telling them that he had never been a host and was not, as far as he was aware, dead. That lead to an entire train of thought he would have to ride later when his entire being was not focused on Shau'ri's presence.
The River of Lethe wasn't the only thing that could make Daniel forget everything else and the rest of the world vanished.
She was before him.
"Should you be doing that, sir?" The sir came after a pause, as if Carter wasn't sure whether to respect his position as her CO or lock him up because of his position as her CO under an altar with his yellow suited butt in the air and his tongue cursing in a way to turn that air bright cobalt, or possibly navy.
"Daniel was crawling around here, damn it," Jack pulled his hand back and swore at the hurting finger. "Right before I yelled at him to get his archaeologically aged butt in gear."
His knees were killing him, but something else was killing Daniel and he'd swap a leg to not have to watch his friend die, not again.
Lazarus Jackson was certainly living up to his nickname. He'd been dead so many times that Ferretti was taking bets on the number of resurrections he would achieve by the end of the year and they were already in to double figures. If Jack wasn't worried that every death would be the archaeologist's last, he'd have laid on a bid himself.
He could hear Carter shifting impatiently. "Find anything, sir?"
"O'Neill," Teal'c's deep voice seemed more god-like than any Goa'uld's in this strange temple. It echoed and reverberated until it filled every niche and returned doubled upon them.
Jack's head shot up and he swore again as it crashed into the altar above him. "Oh fercryin'outloud," he grumbled in one breath, "What?"
Again that rumble seemed to fill the temple. "I believe that Daniel Jackson was bitten by the snake currently approaching us."
"What?" Carter span around and Jack was out from under the table in less time than it took Daniel to drink a mug of coffee. Well, almost, not even Jack's jungle cat reflexes are quite that fast.
"The snake," Teal'c indicated that they should turn around and face the Temple's front door.
Jack spun and saw the slithering serpent coming. His gun was in his hand even before Teal'c finished speaking.
"That thing bit Daniel?" It was tiny, maybe six inches long and as thin as a whip, bright purple with black markings and a forked green tongue. Its sinuous body movements were deceptively calm as it had already reached the steps at the base of the altar and was hissing at them angrily. It also had minute wings sprouting from behind its head.
"Shehhehehesss 'Thing'?"
How to hiss something with no s in it is a minor problem when you're tongue is split in two.
Jack thought he was hearing things and shook his head slightly to get rid of the ringing in his ears. "Carter, any ideas?"
"Not yet, sir," she was also looking wary. Her grip on her gun tightened.
"It calls me thing? The crawling, shuffling, foul ape calls me 'thing'?" Again the hissing sound came but this time it resolved into words.
"Did you just hear the snake talk?" Jack was relieved to see both Carter and Teal'c give subtle nods. OK, so not crazy, just turning into Dr Dolittle.
An outraged hiss reached their ears. "Snake? I?"
Images of Miss Piggy pouting and saying 'Pretentious? Moi?' ran through Jack's head. Daniel was right, pop culture was destroying his brain. "OK, so you're not a thing or a snake, how about serpent?"
"God." It looked as smug as the snakeheads he so happily blew up at every opportunity. He wondered if the attitude came as standard with the cold-blooded body and forked tongue. "Guardian of this place. Your Lord and Master. Kneel before me or perish in agony."
"Oh, no," Jack shook his head in mocking sadness, "We've met snakes that think they were gods and now they're itty bitty tiny bits of snakes that used to think they were gods."
"Goa'uld?" If the not-a-snake-but-a-god had had eyebrows, it would have raised one.
"Yes." Teal'c did have eyebrows, but he didn't see the point of raising either of them at this juncture.
"No true gods," the selectively-blasphemous-not-a-snake-but-a-god was edging towards them, its little wings burring.
Jack made sure his weapon was pointed straight at its diamond shaped head. Most things died with a sufficiently large bullet in their cerebellum. God, he'd just thought a word like cerebellum, far from pop culture rotting his brain, he'd been hanging out with geeks too long Making a mental note to have a beer and hockey night with Ferretti soon, Jack cocked the gun and showed the famous O'Neill eat-lead-and-like-it smile. "So they aren't gods but you are?"
"Yes." At last, a word it could hiss properly. The s echoed around them until a distant stone fell and displaced the sound.
"Did you bite our friend?" Carter's P90 was also trained on the snake but her manner was far more conciliatory than her Colonel's.
Jack could have sworn the snake gave Teal'c's stomach an assessing look. "Bite? No, I merely nibbled. If I had bitten, he would be dead."
"Daniel Jackson is mostly dead." Anyone who didn't know the Jaffa would have said that his face was impassive and his voice emotionless. Anyone who did know him would have said that Teal'c was in a volcanic fury and only just keeping it under control.
"Yes?" The damn thing sounded pleased. Jack only just restrained himself from firing his P90 an inch to the right of it in warning.
"Yes." His trigger finger was getting really itchy. "He's been mostly-dead all day and I want to know what you did to him."
If the thing had had shoulders, it would have shrugged. "Sent him on his way."
Jack's finger was really, really, really itchy now. He swapped hands because it was that or blow the damn thing in two right this second. "On his way where?"
Carter gave him a look that expressed her surprise at his keeping his temper this long. He hadn't even said "Ohfercryin'outloud" yet and she was finding it disturbing. A Jack with a quiet demeanour was a Jack getting ready for a seriously big blow up.
…Itch, itch, itch.
"To his heart's desire." Again, the snake-thing hissed where there were no susurrations.
"Ohfercryin'outloud!"
Carter couldn't help but feel slightly relieved. That was more like the Colonel. Perhaps the coming storm could be averted.
…itch, Itch, ITCH.
"And what is the desire of the heart of Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c's head was slightly on one side and his eyebrow almost raised, a sure sign that he was going to be treading on the snake soon if it didn't start offering some answers fast.
…ITCH, ITCH, ITCH!
The snake smirked, or did whatever the snake equivalent was. "To be with his wife."
"Ahh." Jack at last scratched his itch. The bullet bore into the temple floor an inch from the thing's head and it hissed furiously at him in response, its bright green tongue spitting out at him and lashing the steps with bright orange saliva.
"Blasphemer!"
Jack made a point of aiming the gun directly at the snake's head. It took the point.
The thing arched its back off the ground and swayed before them, its tiny body undulating as it moved hypnotically closer. "Take me to him and I will recover him from his living death."
Now there was a phrase to soothe the savage tiger-Colonel. The slight expression on Teal'c's face assured Carter that he was thinking along similarly sarcastic lines.
"And why should we believe you?"
This time the thing definitely shrugged. "I am a God. I speak no lies. My words fork lightning."
"Certainly forked your tongue," Jack muttered as he considered the options. "Right, we're taking it back, but under restraints, OK?"
The other two exchanged a glance. What else could they do? Daniel was lying in an infirmary bed, pulse and breathing so slow and shallow that he might as well have stopped, the ventilator Janet had put him on forcing life into him but not strength. They had to save him. They had to try.
"Grab that pot." If Daniel had been there, he would have frowned at pot and started to explain how the pot was actually a funeral urn of great religious significance but if Daniel had been there, they wouldn't be having this problem. The whole of SG-1 ached at that moment for one of his lectures, even one of the really boring ones about the importance of pot shards found in middens underneath layers of night-soil.
Now they were in the shit and it wasn't for archaeological reasons.
Moving with the speed of a man trained to dodge well-aimed water balloons thrown by ex-First Primes, Jack caught the snake-not-a-god-thing behind its head and gripped firmly, forcing its tiny body into the urn with the roughness of barely contained righteous indignation.
The creature hissed at him and attempted to break back out, its green eyes shining with wrath. "I am your God, and you dare to treat me thus?"
O'Neill just managed a smirk at it. "Get used to it. Until Daniel's better, you're our prisoner."
Its cries of rage were cut off by Teal'c slamming the lid onto the urn. "The creature is most annoying."
"You can say that again."
"The creature is," The Jaffa caught Jack's eye and wisely stopped. The Colonel was holding onto his patience by a thread as thin as spider silk and nowhere near as tough.
"Let's get back to Daniel. If the little megalomaniac Napoleon in the jar," he shook it and they could all hear the thing swear inside, "doesn't help Daniel, I figure we can always send it back to Chaka for supper. I'm sure he'd like a new victim for a game of Toss the Snake-Head."
The I-am-God-snake-creature hissed at them. It didn't need to know who or what Chaka was to know that Jack meant business. It wasn't used to this kind of treatment. It was a God and had been worshipped as such for millennia. True, lately its number of worshippers had dwindled as the planet's population had slowly gone extinct, but the coming of the bright-minded young Earther had changed all that.
In the darkness, the creature lurked and plotted and smirked. The one called O'Neill would regret he'd ever seen the urn. Curling up on itself, the thing in the pot bit its own tail and sucked meditatively. Justice was sweet, but vengeance was sweeter.
TBC...
Too short? More tomorrow.